People Speaking a Foreign Language Make Less Emotional Decisions

People Speaking a Foreign Language Make Less Emotional Decisions

Humor is notoriously lost in translation. And there are lots of ways personalities shift when we switch language. A recent study in the Public Library of Science shows that our moral judgments may be affected by language, too.

Unlike language-dependent puns or sarcasm, we like to think that moral decisions are rooted in steadfast principles of right and wrong. But researchers have recently argued that people make systematically different judgments depending on whether they face a moral dilemma in a foreign or native language.